Category Archives: UK

EDL thugs target trade union and labour movement bookshop

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Members of the English Defence League invaded Merseyside’s main trade union and labour movement bookshop on Saturday.

The EDL is an organisation of racist thugs with fascists in its midst. It primarily targets Muslims with its vicious racism. But it is increasingly turning its sights on other traditional fascist targets, such as trade unionists and socialists as well as ethnic minorities.

The News From Nowhere bookshop is a central part of the trade union and labour movement in Liverpool, selling tickets for antiracist events and coaches to anticuts protests, as well as books on everything from feminism and activism to the local area and children’s literature.

On Saturday 7 May, around 15 EDL supporters, arrived at the bookshop with flags. A group then came into the shop and attempted to intimidate staff – including making comments to female staff about pornography – before they were eventually moved on by police.

UAF news report, 9 May 2011

Avon axes BNP candidate over racist Facebook comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nancy Shaw-Farmer with Der FuhrerA BNP candidate has been axed as an Avon representative after making racist remarks on Facebook.

The company “terminated its relationship” with self-employed sales leader Nancy Shaw-Farmer, who stood as a BNP candidate in Blackburn’s Roe Lee ward, after complaints about her posts on the social networking site.

It launched an investigation after receiving calls about the offensive comments which were derogatory to Asian people. Her comments included: “4 P***s in a car near where I work asked for directions to a junior school. Sent them in the wrong direction.” She also wrote: “Bungee jumping! 25 per person. Muslims and P***s free. No strings attached and free transport. ha ha ha.”

Ms Shaw-Farmer, from the Bastwell area of Blackburn, lost after polling 175 votes in last week’s election. She had worked as an Avon sales leader for 12 months and had around 30 customers.

Blackburn Citizen, 10 May 2011

Birmingham Project Champion ‘spy’ cameras being removed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham spy cameraMore than 200 so-called “spy cameras” installed in largely Muslim areas of Birmingham are being dismantled.

The cameras in Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook, some of which were hidden, were paid for with £3m of government funds earmarked for tackling terrorism.

An independent report was highly critical of the Project Champion scheme and West Midlands Police. The force agreed in December they should be removed and said none of the 218 cameras had ever been switched on.

Assistant Chief Constable Sharon Rowe said: “The work starting today shows that we have listened to what our communities wanted and acted upon those wishes. We accept that mistakes were made and we are keen to learn the lessons that emerged from the review into Project Champion. The removal of the cameras is part of that learning process.”

BBC News, 9 May 2011

See also Birmingham Post, 9 May 2011

Joel Titus banned from attending EDL protests and loitering outside mosques

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joel Titus Harrow
Titus punching photographer Marc Vallée at a Stop Islamisation of Europe protest outside Harrow Central Mosque in December 2009 (Photo: Jonathan Warren)

An Eastcote teenager has been banned from attending protests by far-right group the English Defence League.

Joel Titus, 19, of North View, who has been violent at EDL protests, was slapped with an antisocial behaviour order (ASBO) at Uxbridge Magistrates Court on Friday. The court heard about the teenager’s involvement in a string of incidents between 2009 and 2010, which police say were overwhelmingly related to EDL protests.

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Dawkins ponders anti-Islam alliance with evangelical Christians

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bakke anti-Islam mapRichard Dawkins is often described as a “militant atheist”. However, if this term is meant to convey that Dawkins maintains a uniform hostility to all varieties of religious belief then it is misapplied.

Dawkins makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is discriminatory in his opposition to different faiths. He happily describes himself as a “cultural Christian” – by which he means a cultural Anglican. After all, according to Dawkins, Roman Catholicism is “the world’s second most evil religion”. No prizes for guessing which faith is the most evil. Indeed, Dawkins holds the view that Islam is not only by far the worst of all the major faiths but is also arguably “the greatest man-made force for evil in the world today”.

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‘Hundreds’ of MAC supporters demonstrate for Osama bin Laden

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MAC bin Laden demoWell, that’s the figure given by the tabloid press for the number of participants at the demonstration by Anjem Choudary’s Muslims Against Crusades group yesterday.

The Mail reported: “A protest by hundreds of Osama Bin Laden supporters sparked fury outside the US Embassy in London today as they staged a mock ‘funeral service’ for the terror leader…. Radicals carrying placards proclaiming ‘Islam will dominate the world’ branded US leaders ‘murderers’ and warned vengeance attacks were ‘guaranteed’.”

The Sun and the Express agreed that “hundreds” of Choudary’s supporters joined the embassy protest.

Even allowing for the fact that an event like Bin Laden’s death would bring a larger than normal turnout, this seems highly unlikely, given that the supporters Choudary is able to attract to his provocative stunts are usually numbered in the tens rather than the hundreds. Indeed, Associated Press reported that “dozens of people” attended yesterday’s demonstration, while Reuters puts the figure at no more than “about a hundred”. Photos of the protest would appear to confirm that the “hundreds” of MAC demonstrators were a figment of the press’s imagination.

But this is what we have come to expect from the tabloid press. They repeatedly boost the importance and significance of Anjem Choudary and his tiny group, suggesting to their readers that he represents substantial forces within Britain’s Muslim communities, when in reality he represents next to nothing. This in turn feeds the paranoid far-right fantasies of the English Defence League, who organised a counter-protest against MAC yesterday. EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon recently predicted, with an entirely straight face, that “there’s going to be a hundred thousand Anjem Choudarys”.

Race attack on train after EDL rally

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police are appealing for information about a racist attack on a train. Officers say a man launched a torrent of racial abuse and attacked a passenger travelling alone from Halifax to Bradford. The assault happened on Saturday, April 16, and followed a march by the far-right group in Halifax town centre.

PC Alan Dean, the investigating officer from British Transport Police, said: “A group of men all boarded the 3.29pm Blackpool North to York service. During the journey, two of the group sat next to the victim – a 24-year-old who was travelling alone – and began to make racial comments. It is believed that one of the men then assaulted him, causing bruising and cuts to the victim’s face.”

Officers went to Bradford Interchange to meet the train and a 43-year-old man from Barnsley was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated assault. He has since been bailed until June 16 pending further police inquiries.

PC Dean said: “The behaviour of some of this group was outrageous and has no place on the railway – or in the wider community. Everyone has the right to travel without fear of abuse or threatening behaviour, and when that behaviour is further exacerbated by racist undertones, our stance becomes firmer still.

“British Transport Police and the wider rail industry will not tolerate any form of racism on the rail network and we will do everything in our power to take action against those responsible.”

If you have information about the attack contact British Transport Police on 0800 405040 quoting background reference B8/NEA of May 5, 2011 or call the independent charity CrimeStoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

Halifax Courier, 7 May 2011

EDL has nothing to do with BNP, claims Guramit Singh

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen Lennon with Richard Edmonds
EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (standing, left) at a BNP meeting in 2007

The English Defence League’s token Sikh, Guramit Singh, has written a long, rambling letter addressed to members and supporters of the Turban Campaign. It is Singh’s belated response to the statement issued last December by representatives of Britain’s Asian communities opposing the EDL and the British National Party.

Singh takes particular exception to the statement’s bracketing of the EDL with the BNP: “I’d like to state now, the English Defence League denounces the British National Party! … Its current leader was a member of the National Front and one of the founders, John Tyndall was a Neo Nazi. Why would the EDL want to be linked to the BNP? We don’t, but our opponents want us to be!”

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Another scaremongering Express headline falls flat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Five arrested at nuclear plantThis was the banner headline in Wednesday’s Daily Express. The paper reported:

Anti-terror police were questioning five men last night amid fears of an Al Qaeda-inspired plot to attack the Sellafield nuclear plant. The suspects, in their 20s and believed to be of Bangladeshi origin, were caught filming at the highly sensitive site in Cumbria – 250 miles from their homes in London.

Armed police arrested the men on bank holiday Monday only hours after Osama Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan. The nuclear plant has been placed on high alert following Al Qaeda threats to unleash a “nuclear hellstorm” in revenge for the terror chief’s death.

Last night police seized a small container of “suspicious material” at one of the suspects’ homes.

Predictably, the irresponsible media scaremongering produced this sort of response from EDL supporters, who take their line on Muslims and Islam directly from the tabloid press.

Yesterday BBC News reported that the arrested men had all been freed. ENGAGE asked the question: “what likelihood is there of proportional coverage by the media of the men being released without charge?”

The answer, of course, was none whatsoever. Buried at the bottom of page 7 in today’s issue of the Express we find a single paragraph which reads:

The five students who sparked an Al Qaeda terror alert near the Sellafield nuclear power station were there because of a satnav error. Rather than being terrorists avenging the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Bangladeshis from London were enjoying a picnic on Monday after putting CA20 in the satnav instead of CA12 for a hike on Scafell Pike, Cumbria, England’s highest peak. They were freed without charge.